


Misty Watercolor Memories

by leiascully



Category: Green Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-21
Updated: 2007-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-03 02:03:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And that way," he murmured, "you can relive the way I steal the covers."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Misty Watercolor Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: post-series  
> A/N: Many thanks to [**ebonybeach**](http://ebonybeach.livejournal.com/) for being a fabulous beta. She Britpicked all my Americanisms right out.  
> Disclaimer: _Green Wing_ and all related characters are the property of Victoria Pile and BBC4. No infringement is intended and no profit is made.

The honeymoon was two weeks of unbelievable bliss, and if Caroline concentrated hard enough on how gorgeously blue Mac's eyes were and how warm his lips were and how right it felt to have his ring on her hand, she could forget for a few hours that she was going to be the widow Macartney all too soon. Once she forgot for almost a whole day, when a hike up a mountain got them caught in a rainstorm and they had to take shelter in some kind of hut, and they made love in a pile of hay and spent the rest of the week finding seeds and bits of straw in their clothing.

Going home brought it all back, but at least there she had the comfort of domesticity. Guy, grumbling good-naturedly about newlyweds, had taken himself off to Mac's apartment.

"Fiancée-stealing ginger bastard," he complained as he shrugged on his jacket after welcome-back drinks in the living room. "I might as well have stayed. You're just going to die anyway and then I'll move right back in."

Caroline slapped him for that, and then kissed his cheek apologetically where the mark of her hand was. Mac pulled his best stoic face and put his arm around Caroline's waist. "Out, Secretan," he commanded as Guy dawdled in the doorway. "I'm going to make love to my wife in as many rooms as we can manage and I don't want your ugly Swiss face putting me off my stride."

"I love you," Caroline said to Mac as the door closed behind a sulky Guy.

"I know," he said, and pushed her up against the kitchen cabinets with kisses as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

\+ + + +

Mac had brought over a few boxes of clothes and some of the books and things he loved best, and he and Caroline unpacked them, trying to maintain some semblance of a normal life. He arranged his clothes in the wardrobe as Caroline watched the wedding tapes and stuck photos into an album that was covered in lace and tiny pearls, a gift from someone.

"Oh, look," she said in a voice that melted around the edges. "There we are, getting married. Oh, you look lovely."

"And you look very handsome," he said, abandoning the shirts to sprawl on the bed beside her. She shifted the album off her lap and he put his head on her thigh and let her push her hand through his hair as he rubbed the long muscles in her calf.

"I don't think there have ever been any photos of us together," she said, passing her free hand over the pages of the album.

"I seem to recall a whole load of photos being taken about, oh, two weeks ago?" he said. "Are you having memory problems now? Christ, it's contagious. Quick, kiss me before the coma hits you."

She tweaked his ear but bent to kiss him anyway. "I meant before," she said, close to his face, staring upside down into his eyes.

"You have the most beautiful smile," he said, apropos of nothing. "I'm glad I get to see it more often."

"Guy said something like that once," she said, remembering.

"Guy, Guy, Guy," said Mac amiably. "Doesn't matter that it's me you took the vows with, there really are three of us in this marriage, aren't there? I'm only teasing, Caroline," he added, as her mouth crooked with worry and defensiveness. "It's just funny. Poor bastard hasn't got anyone else anymore, now that you've turned him on to the joys of fidelity. He did a good thing and now he's learning to live with it. Plus, he's lost his fiancée and his best friend in one fell swoop. You really ought to marry him when I'm dead."

"Don't talk about it," she said miserably, and he sat up and stroked her face.

"Not talking about it won't make it less true," he said gently.

"I know," she whispered, "but look how happy we were."

"Are," he corrected. "Look how happy we are."

"We are, aren't we?" she said. "I love you."

"I love you, too," he said, and drew her face down to his. She pretended she wasn't crying.

"Look," she said later, curled up against his chest. "There we are again. Dancing."

"Good," he said, stroking her back. "Now you'll always remember what an awful dancer I am. See? You're flinching there. I must have stepped on your toes."

"You didn't," she said. "Guy was trying to steal the bride and groom off the top of the cake. I think he's still got the him-groom."

"I'll always wonder why the mini-me had a handbag," said Mac, "but it was good of him to spring for the cake."

"Practical," she said absently. "Was already ordered." Her eyes were on the screen. "I will remember."

"I'll be archived for your perusal," he said, kissing her forehead. "Anytime you miss me, you can just turn me on."

"Mac..." she said hesitantly. "I've just had an idea."

"Go on then," he said comfortably, fingers on her hip under the rucked-up hem of her shirt, sliding up her ribs. "What's your idea?"

"Well," she said, and blushed so violently that he touched her forehead with the backs of his fingers in alarm. "I just...I want to remember, and it's so much easier with the video, and when you said...about turning you on, I thought...."

"Why, Mrs. Mac," he said, his voice rich with affectionate amusement, "are you suggesting we make a sex tape?"

"No!" she said. "I mean, yes, in a way, but you make it sound so dirty. We could tape a whole day and just...leave the camera on."

"And that way," he murmured, "you can relive the way I steal the covers."

Her eyes glistened with tears again. "It's so hard, Mac," she whispered.

"Did you ever think it was going to be easy?" he asked, smoothing her hair off her forehead so he could kiss her brow. "With destiny agin us? Look what we did. Look where we are. You've been so brave, Caroline." He rubbed her shoulders, holding her against him.

"I'm sorry I keep crying," she said shakily.

"It had to come out sometime," he said. "I don't think I've seen you cry since the wedding. It would be worse if you weren't sad." He smiled down at her. "The tape is a good idea. We even have a camcorder, thanks to Guy."

"Tomorrow?" she said. "I don't want to run out of time. For now we still have leave."

"Tomorrow," he promised.

\+ + + +

Caroline was up early, training the camera on Mac as he slept, narrating quietly without really knowing what to say. "We've been married for two and a half weeks," she murmured into the tiny microphone, wanting to say something, anything that would evoke this morning, the room full of gold light and Mac peaceful and whole in their bed. "Mac always sleeps this way, with his arm under the pillow."

"Are you filming for the nature documentary?" he said muzzily into the loft of the pillows. "Come back to bed for a bit."

She set the camera carefully on a chair, trained the focus on the bed, and crawled back into his arms. "Morning," he said, kissing her, his hand moving down her back to her bare thigh. "Have I told you today how beautiful you are?" She kissed him back but squirmed as his fingers crept up under the green silk of her nightie.

"Mac! Not yet!"

"No time like the present," he said.

"We look mad for it," she protested.

"So let it be preserved for posterity that I enjoyed making love to my wife," he said. "I don't care if the whole world knows that I want you every time I see you." He kissed her ear.

She felt the familiar aching rush of joy that overwhelmed her every time he said the words "my wife".

"Do you know what I want you to remember most of all?" he whispered into her ear as his hand slid up her thigh. "The most important thing? The thing I want you to remember when you've been married to Guy for so long that I'm just a misty watercolor memory?"

"I'm not going to marry Guy," she said, her fingers tightening on the fabric of his boxers.

"The thing that you should remember above all else," he said, as if she hadn't spoken, "is that I love you, Caroline. More than anything."

\+ + + +

The video came out in fragments of image and sound, the chair rocked by the rattle of the bed: the quiet rustle of fabric and lovetalk, words half-discernable. A long series of kisses, no one's face really visible, just the side of a nose here or a chin there, Mac's ginger head and Caroline's dark one and planes of shadowed fair skin. The perfect alignment of dissimilar bodies with the sheet tugged half over a hip. Caroline somewhere between startled and ecstatic as Mac kissed the inside of her thigh, the focus of the shot on her throat and one breast, Mac's head just visible over her belly. The rising pitch of her moans, the taut arch of her back that lifted her body into view, and Mac stretched out beside her, shifting her into position against him. Mac in the throes of orgasm, his teeth bared and his dimples showing. The murmur afterwards as he held her.

Domestic scenes where the video picked up: two heads visible above the foam in the bathtub. Mac soaping Caroline's back. Caro rubbing shampoo into Mac's hair as he closed his eyes in bliss. Mutually insistent towelling off that turned into a quick dalliance against the airing cupboard. Mac with just a towel low around his hips making toast in the kitchen, the last piece of crust vanishing between his lips as he waved to the camera. Caro curled into Mac's side on the couch, reading a book together.

The camcorder balanced on a pile of magazines on the countertop in the kitchen. The two of them cooking, chopping vegetables and frying meat, feeding each other with their fingers, getting caught up in kisses until the food almost burned. Laughing together. Mac hipshot at the sink doing the dishes, suds on his arms and the towel slung over his shoulder. Caroline wiping down the table until Mac came up behind her and put his arms around her.

Later they made love again, the camcorder carefully positioned on a tripod to get a better angle. Mac touched her in all the tender ways he knew she loved best, his surgeon's hands gentle and precise. Afterwards they watched the tape together in the bed, sated and amused.

"There now," said Mac. "Now you'll always have me around."

"I wish I could," she said.

"Me too," he said with a crooked smile. "But you know what? We still have tomorrow."

\+ + + +

Caroline always suspected that was the night Isabelle was conceived. Mac was gone long before Isabelle arrived, and it was Guy who stepped in as a father figure, displaying a surprising amount of compassion for someone who before had only cared about the Swiss water polo team. He held her hand during the labour and didn't complain even when she bruised his fingers squeezing his hand. He didn't faint, he wasn't sarcastic, and Caroline was grateful. "You need help," he said, and started staying over two or three nights a week, sleeping on the couch at first, and then on the other side of the bed without touching her, getting up to feed Isabelle when she cried early in the morning. Caroline got so used to having him around that by the time Isabelle was two, she'd begun to think of him as a real member of their little family, someone who belonged in the house. He wasn't Mac, but he filled a space. She still had Mac's shirts hanging in the wardrobe, but Mac wasn't there, and Guy was at the end of the day when she needed a shoulder to lean on or someone else to hold the baby for a little while.

\+ + + +

They had put Isabelle to bed, she and Guy, and they were sitting on the couch doing nothing in particular, drinking wine.

"Danny DeVito was wrong," he said, his leg warm against hers. "You are the love of my life."

"Danny DeVito? When were you talking to him?"

"It was a her actually, but it doesn't matter," he said. He took her glass and set it on the coffee table, looking into her eyes in a way that made her jittery. "Caroline," he said tenderly.

"Shall we watch some telly, then?" she said, suddenly nervous. His eyes moved over her face and he shrugged, sitting back against the cushions. He picked up the remote and clicked the television on. But instead of late night programming on the screen, it was Mac. Mac cooking in the kitchen, stirring something. Mac wearing that favourite old t-shirt of his. Mac laughing with his hair falling over his eyes. Mac coming toward the camera with the clear purpose of seducing the person behind it. Caroline could hear herself laughing on the tape, and Mac murmuring sexily as the picture blurred and the focus fell on an unassuming chest of drawers in a corner of the room. She'd forgotten she'd been watching this a few weeks ago.

"We don't have to," she started, but Guy was smiling, looking a little bit lost.

"Good old Mac," he said. "I miss that ginger bastard. This was a good idea of someone's, filming. A nice way to remember."

The tape fizzed briefly into static and then refocused on the bedroom. She could see Mac's bare back and the edge of her hip. On the screen, she was moaning softly as he kissed her; tiny, desperate, hungry noises, her hands fluttering against his back as if she wanted to touch him everywhere at once. Mac was holding her to him like the last good thing on Earth.

Caroline on the couch felt tears prickling in her eyes, and the old nearly-forgotten flicker of desire in her belly. Guy was watching the screen with a strange expression, fascination and confusion and wanting. Caroline grabbed for the remote, trying to turn the television off, but Guy held it away from her and she ended up in his lap.

"Have you got a hard-on from watching this?" she demanded, sprawled across him.

"Can't help it," he said. "You're gorgeous and you're having sex with my best friend, whom I loved in maybe more than a manly way, on the screen in front of me. That's closer than I've got to a woman in months and closer than I've been in years to seeing the woman I love in my own bed, so, yes, I have a hard-on. Look, Mac does have a freckly back. Good to know retrospectively that my teasing was accurate."

"Turn if off, Guy! That's personal!"

"I'm watching," he protested, but she grabbed his wrist and wrestled the remote away. The television clicked off and after the pang of loss she felt from not hearing Mac, she realised she was straddling Guy's lap. He raised his hand and drew his fingers down her face and she shivered.

"Caroline," he said in a quiet, sexy voice. "Has anyone even touched you since he died?"

"I...well, there was that time that...no, not really," she admitted, and his eyes were lovely the way they always had been, and his hands were gentle and familiar. His fingertips were still stroking her cheek and his other hand was on her hip. She had a vague memory of sex with Guy, remembered it being all heat and sweetness and the strength of his love, because she had known that he'd loved her, those weeks that they'd been together. There had been a little less laughter in it than there had been with Mac, a little less of the unadulterated joy of being together, but she could learn to laugh again. There had been a reason she'd been going to marry him, more than the disappointment of losing Mac again, and she imagined that Guy could remind her.

"Caroline," he said again, his voice caressing her name, and if she'd had any resolve to avoid this, she was slipping.

"Go on then," she said. "Kiss me."

He hesitated, looking into her eyes, his hand cradling the back of her head. He tipped her face toward his and kissed her gently. Her eyes fluttered closed involuntarily. Guy felt like home. Not the way Mac had, not like the childhood ideal of home, the place that never leaves you, the place where you're always welcome; but Guy felt like this house, the place that she belonged now, the niche she'd carved out in the world. His mouth was warm and comfortable, his tongue brushing against hers in a polite reminder of the passion he was capable of. By the time he drew back, she knew that he'd be staying, and she knew she'd be glad of it.

She slid off his lap and he looked worried. It was endearing: his beautiful eyes were wide, his pupils dilated with desire, his mouth was quirked with that mixture of concern and uncertainty, and his trousers did nothing to disguise his ridiculous erection. He opened his mouth to say something, but she cut him off.

"Aren't you going to come upstairs, Doctor Secretan?"

\+ + + +

They undressed each other very slowly. Caroline was nervous for reasons she couldn't quite pin down; she supposed not having had a click in a while was one of them, and she supposed the look of worship in Guy's eyes and the careful way he touched her was another. She hadn't had her arms around anyone but the baby in so long she'd forgotten the thrill of these sorts of deliberate, knowing touches. And Guy knew her. Guy remembered.

"Did he touch you here?" Guy breathed as he ran his hands over her. "Do you miss him at night? Did he hold you like this?"

She arched against him, her face damp with tears. She wasn't sad exactly. It was more of a muscle memory: no one had touched her since Mac so nothing else could unlock those kinds of memories and the tears that went with them. It was catharsis. Strangely, magically, this closeness to Guy was like a celebration of their joint grief at Mac's absence.

"Maybe we should have just all got married," she murmured, remembering, and then moaning as Guy touched the right places.

"Tell me, Caroline," he whispered against her collarbone. "Tell me how it was. Tell me how you want it to be."

The same places on her body, although her body had different curves and textures to it these days, after the baby. The same nerves under her skin, the same duvet on the same bed in the same room. Different hands but the same absolute knowledge of being cherished. "Oh," she said as the room went all starry, "oh oh oh."

"I love you, Doctor Todd," he said. "Mrs. Mac. I love you."

She reached blindly for his hand and held it to her mouth, her lips pressed against his palm. Her body was limp with afterglow and her head lolled on the pillow. She opened her eyes and saw the photo of Mac on the nightstand. Through the haze of her lashes, it seemed to her that he was smiling a little more broadly than usual.

\+ + + +

Caroline woke in the morning with the bulk of Guy curled around her, his arm thrown possessively over her hip. "Morning, Mac," she whispered to the photograph, which was still smiling.

"Morning, Mac," said Guy sleepily. "Don't worry, I'll be good to her. I don't need your ginger ghost after me. Two is enough in a bed after all."

"Two live people plus a ghost and then probably a very lively two year old when she wakes up," mused Caroline, stretching under the weight of Guy's arm. "What a dysfunctional family we are."

"The modern ideal," said Guy. "Shall we get a puppy? Anything but a King Charles spaniel."

"We'll see," said Caroline, snuggling into him. "I still have to get you housetrained."

"Ouch."

It was a bright and lovely morning. The sun sifted in through the curtains to light their new happiness, and when they laughed, they could almost hear Mac laughing too.


End file.
